Prisons ‘will be places of work’

Work houses will be created in prisons to end regimes of ‘enforced and bored idleness’, justice secretary
Ken Clarke will announce today.

Justice secretary Ken Clarke

Prisons will be built around factories or recycling plants so that every prisoner who can work, will work.

In his speech to the Conservative Party conference, Mr Clarke will revive a policy of John Major ’s last Tory government and make deductions from the earnings of working prisoners to provide compensation for victims of crime.

Private firms will pay the minimum wage of £5.80 per hour but the prisoners will see only £20 of that per week – more than double the current £9.60 per week most prisoners who work get paid.

About 20 per cent of the remaining £210 will go to victim support with the rest going to the prisoner’s family and on running the prison service.

Mr Clarke will announce: ‘To raise those funds, we need to instil in our jails a regime of hard work. Most prisoners lead a life of enforced, bored idleness, where getting out of bed is optional. We need as many prisoners as possible to work for regular hours.’